Day: May 5, 2025

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TTC Service Changes Effective May 11, 2025

The TTC will make several changes to service on May 11 primarily for the transition to summer schedules with lower post-secondary school demand, and to restructure service for a major construction project.

For details on the King/Church project and its potential effects on traffic congestion, see King-Church Construction and Traffic Effects. Affected routes are 503/303 Kingston Road, 504/304 King, 508 Lake Shore and 511 Bathurst. For details, see that article.

Updated May 6, 2025 at 3:40 pm: Spreadsheet listing service designs for old and new schedules added.

Updated May 7, 2025 at 8:50 am: Diversion map for Roe Loop summer Saturday closures added.

Updated May 8, 2025 at 7:45 am: Spreadsheet updated with corrected data for 92 Woodbine South.

Updated May 8, 2025 at 11:40 pm: Spreadsheet updated with data for 939 Finch Express.

Updated May 9, 2025 at 3:30 pm: Destination sign changes added for all affected routes.

Permanent Service Changes:

  • 9 Bellamy:
    • Service improved in the morning, afternoon and early evening on Saturdays, and in he afternoon and early evening on Sundays to reduce crowding.
    • Service reduced early mornings on Saturday, and on late evenings on Saturday/Sunday.
    • Service adjusted in late evenings to align with Lakeshore GO trains at Scarborough and Eglinton GO stations.
  • 101 Downsview Park: Trips are added in the peak periods to better align with the GO Barrie service at Downsview Park Station. This has been informally in effect since March 2025.
  • 114 Queens Quay:
    • Service adjusted in all time periods for reliability and to take advantage of new reserved bus lanes on Queens Quay.
    • Service officially removed from the Logan, Lake Shore, Carlaw loop with the route extended to Lake Shore Garage. This change has informally been in effect since September 2024.
  • 123 Sherway:
    • Service improved on weekends to address crowding during most periods.
    • The current 1:13am trip by the 123B from Long Branch Loop will be changed to 1:17am to better connect with the Lake Shore GO train.
  • 125 Drewry:
    • Service improved early evenings on weekends, and early morning on Saturday to address crowding.
    • Saturday “afternoon” service levels will extend from 7:00 to 8:00pm.
  • 134 Progress: Weekday midday and early evening schedules will be adjusted to provide evenly spaced departures from Centennial College Progress Campus by the 134 Progress and 903 Kennedy Station Express services.
  • 165 Weston Road North: The routing of YRT 165 Weston on April 27 will change to operate both ways via Weston Road, and it will no longer run on Old Weston Road. Transfers to TTC’s 165 Weston Road North can be made on Steeles at Weston or at Old Weston northbound, and at Signet Drive southbound.
  • 927 Highway 27 Express:
    • All service will operate with 40-foot buses due to constraints on the articulated bus fleet. Service will run more frequently in many weekend periods to ensure sufficient capacity.
    • 927A weekday midday school trippers to Humber College will be removed for the summer.
  • 939 Finch Express: All service will operate with articulated buses.

Seasonal changes:

  • 22 Coxwell: Holiday service will extended to the loop at Lake Shore and Northern Dancer Blvds, and will be interlined with 92 Woodbine South. Service on both routes will be adjusted. There is no change to regular weekday or weekend service.
  • 38/938 Highland Creek: Service on the 38B to University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) and on the 938 express will be discontinue for the summer. Service on the 38A branch to Rouge Hill GO will be improved during weekday peak and midday periods.
  • 65 Parliament: Service will be reduced weekdays in the early morning, AM and PM peaks.
  • 75 Sherbourne:
    • Service will be reduced weekdays in the early morning, AM peak, midday and PM peak.
    • Schedules adjusted to reflect implementation of reserved bus lanes on Queens Quay. Buses will no longer stop westbound on Queens Quay at Richardson.
    • The north end layover point will be shifted from South Drive at Glen Road to Bloor Street East at Sherbourne Station.
  • 92 Woodbine South: Service improved during all periods.
  • 102 Markham Road:
    • 102A to Progress/Centennial College service removed for the summer.
    • Some late evening trips will be adjusted to go out of service on Markham Rd at Sheppard Ave E instead of Warden Station and/or Markham Rd at Progress Ave. This change will also improve transfers with the 385 Sheppard East night bus.
  • 124 Sunnybrook and 162 Lawrence-Donway: Saturday service until 3pm will be extended west to Bathurst and Lawrence so that Roe Loop can be closed for a community market.
  • 200 Toronto Zoo: Service from the Toronto Zoo to Rouge Hill GO will resume on weekends from morning to early evening periods. Weekday service will resume with the June schedule change.
  • 201 Bluffer’s Park: Service from Kennedy Station to Scarborough Bluffs Beach will resume on weekends from morning to early evening periods. Weekday service will resume with the June schedule change.
  • 202 Cherry Beach:
    • Union Station to Cherry Beach service will resume with weekday service from the midday to early evening period (ending at 10:20 pm from Cherry Beach), and weekend service from the morning to late evening period.
    • Schedules will be adjusted to take advantage of the reserved bus lanes on Queens Quay.
  • 902 Markham Rd Express: Three weekday trips from Warden Station at 7:35, 7:47 and 7:59am will be dropped.
  • 903 Kennedy Stn-STC Express: Some weekday trips on the 903A branch to Centennial College will be cut back as 903B trips to end at STC Station. All weekend trips will operate as 903B ending at STC.
  • 905 Eglinton East Express: Service reduced during all weekday periods.
  • 927 Highway 27 Express: See the service change section above.

Additional service will be provided on some routes due to a temporary surplus of operators. Note that these are separate from the Route 600 RAD (Run as Directed) buses:

20 Cliffside
21 Brimley
37 Islington
38 Highland Creek
44 Kipling South
52 Lawrence West
57 Midland

68 Warden
80 Queensway
86 Scarborough
89 Weston
110 Islington South
111 East Mall
119 Torbarrie

123 Sherway
124 Sunnybrook
131 Nugget
939 Finch Express
944 Kipling South Express
960 Steeles West Express
996 Wilson Express

Operational changes that do not affect service levels:

  • 1 Yonge-University-Spadina: The break/relief point will move from Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station to Wilson Station. Double step-backs will be scheduled at all times at both Vaughan Metropolitan Centre and Finch Stations in anticipation of increased off-peak service in late 2025.
  • 510 Spadina: Carhouse trips to/from Leslie Barns will operate via Queen Street rather than King Street due to the King/Church construction.
  • Night bus crews: All night bus crews ending at or after 5:00 a.m. will be adjusted to go into and out of service at their respective divisions instead of on-street.
  • 31 Greenwood: Service to Greenwood Station has not operated for several months due to construction. This will now be reflected in the “official” route description.
  • 72 Pape: This route will be scheduled with electric vehicles in late evenings.
  • 91 Woodbine: The north end layover point will be changed from Valley Woods Road at York Mills Road (west side) to York Mills at Valley Woods (northside).
  • 112 West Mall: This route shifts from Queensway to Mount Dennis division. No schedule change.
  • 365 Parliament Night Bus: The stop westbound on Queens Quay at Richardson will be removed as part of the reserved bus lane implementation.
  • All routes serving the former Villiers Island in the Port Lands will now include its permanent name Ookwemin Minising in the destination signs.
  • Several routes will gain new destination signs for garage trips replacing the generic “short turn”.

Tables and maps appear after the “more” break in this article.

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King-Church Construction and Traffic Effects

Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:50pm:

The TTC now has a web page with details of the changes for the first phase of the construction and diversions. This includes a map showing the diversions to west of Bathurst rather than just downtown. I have added this in the body of the article.

May 5, 2025 at 1:40pm:

Information about the 304 King and 303 Kingston Road night services has been added.

May 5, 2025 at 1:55pm:

The TTC has confirmed that overhead upgrades on King Street East and on Sumach/River will be completed before the King/Church track work end, and streetcar service will resume in September.

May 5, 2025 at 4:30pm:

I asked the City if it thought the intersections used by diverting streetcars and buses could handle the volume of traffic. They replied, but didn’t add much. See the end of the article for the exchange.

Major changes are coming to downtown streetcar routes on May 11 with the next schedule change. This will accommodate a combination of water main replacement, track reconstruction and streetcar overhead upgrades mainly at King and Church. Work is expected to require diversions until the October schedule change on Thanksgiving weekend. Streetcar service is expected to return with the September schedule change on Labour Day weekend.

The effects of work an King and Church have been known for some time through the Annual Service Plan and through a City report on the project. (The original report and recommendations were amended at the recent Council meeting to lessen the effect of various proposed lane closures.) Service levels have been published via the electronic version of schedules used by trip planning apps. The information about vehicles/hour at various locations is taken from those schedules.

(As an aside, the TTC website has still not been updated to include the 2025 Service Plan even though it was approved by the Board in January.)

With the concentration of transit service through various intersections, and the added complexity that most vehicles will make turns at these locations, there simply will not be enough capacity even under ideal conditions. It is no secret that “ideal” is a word rarely appropriate for transit operations downtown thanks to the lack of robust traffic management and real transit priority.

In past years, the diversion of services from King Street around the TIFF street fair created problems for transit travel times and reliability, but this lasted for a brief period. The planned diversions for King/Church will last through the summer.

Many of the water mains in the “old” city have been in service for over a century. Other parts of King Street have seen renewal, occasionally on an emergency basis following a break and sink hole.

The special trackwork at the King/Church intersection has been in bad shape for some time, and was overdue for replacement. Previous reconstructions were in 1983 and 2003. Other competing construction projects got in the way, and the track conditions have worsened year by year. There are many patches, and a well-deserved slow order unlike the standing practice even at freshly rebuilt junctions.

This intersection is also old enough that it predates the era of panel track construction where pre-welded sections are trucked in and assembled on site. This replaced the older style of tracks assembled piece-by-piece and often not welded robustly if at all. TTC has not yet been through its entire inventory of “old” track given the 20-30 year cycle depending on the level of service, wear, and disintegration at intersections.

Other work planned for this period of suspended streetcar service is the reconstruction of overhead on King and on the Distillery branch for pantograph-only operation.

Closing King & Church for an extended period concurrently with the Ontario Line construction at Queen & Yonge will add to the traffic snarls downtown. The City talks about using Traffic Agents to manage key intersections, but whether they provide enough people at enough places at enough times remains to be seen.

Routes Diverting off of King Street

Three routes are affected: 504 King, 503 Kingston Road and 508 Lake Shore.

The 504 King service will be broken into three sections:

  • A 504 streetcar service between Broadview to Dundas West Stations operating via the same route as 501 Queen between the Don Bridge and Spadina.
  • A 504C bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst and east on King terminating at Broadview & Gerrard.
  • A 504D bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst, east on King and south on Sumach to Front & Cherry. Buses will loop via [to be announced] and will not serve Distillery Loop.

The 503 Kingston Road service will be changed so that its western terminus shifts from York Street to Dufferin Loop. Cars will follow the same route as the 504 King via Queen from the Don Bridge to Spadina, then shift south onto King to follow the pre-diversion 504B route to Dufferin.

508 Lake Shore cars will follow the same route as 504 King.

Night Service Changes

  • The 304 King night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same route as the daytime 504 service diverting via Queen and Spadina.
  • A 304D night bus will run every half-hour over the same route as the 504D bus from Wolseley Loop to Broadview & Gerrard.
  • The 303 Kingston Road night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same diversion route as the 304 King night car, and will operate as it does now to Sunnyside.

The maps below are from the City Report about this project originally published in February. An updated map for the first phase has been added later in the article.

Source: City Report at p. 5

For part of the construction period, King/Church will be impassible even to the replacement bus service and it will divert south to Wellington and Front.

Source: City Report at p. 5

These maps do not tell the whole story because another set of construction diversions will overlap the King/Church changes until the next schedule change in late June.

Although water main work at Bathurst/Fleet/Lakeshore is now complete, track work continues there and on Bathurst Street further north. 511 Bathurst streetcars will continue to divert east via King to Spadina looping via Adelaide and Charlotte. The 511B shuttle bus will be shortened from Wolseley Loop at Queen to an on-street loop via King, Portland and Richmond to Bathurst Street.

509 shuttle buses continue operating between Exhibition Loop and Queens Quay Loop at Spadina. 510 streetcars continue operating to Union Station.

The combined effect of the diversions will be greater than during the total meltdown of King service in 2024 when all cars diverted north via Church to Queen because volumes of other routes (510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 501 Queen) will be added to the King services, and more intersections will be affected over a wider area.

Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:50pm:

The TTC’s project webpage has a consolidated map of the diversions for the first phase of the work.

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